Should The Next Windows Be Built On Linux?

scrm writes "The next version of Windows should be built on top of Linux, according to this article by Robert Cringely of PBS." If Microsoft wanted to, they could be the world's largest vendor of Free software .. couldn't they?

Comments

Yeah right

[KilljoyAZ]

That's about as likely as Jack Valenti saying, "We actually don't need copyrights to last this long," or Duke Nukem Forever being released.

wait.....

[skinnedmink]

If anyone could ruin the stability of Linux.....it would be Microsoft.

The question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Linus accept the BSOD patch for the kernel?

Pardon?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

"Now back to Microsoft putting Windows on top of Linux. Linux is better, faster, stronger than whatever is living underneath XP now, right?"

This article posed an interesting proposition but in order for the whole premise to fly, this snippet really has to be a "Well, duh" type of question. I really don't know that it is. Without any definitive proof of this, the author is merely picking at straws. How does anyone know where the clunkiness of Windows comes from? I mean, the NT kernel isn't exactly a slouch and I'm not sure that Linux is vastly superior. How are we to know that the windowing system isn't the problem? Perhaps the real Operating System-type services provided by the kernel are faster and more powerful than the ones provided by Linux. We just don't know because a separation of the windowing system from the real OS isn't possible with MS's closed source system. Thus, this argument isn't really credible to make. It's an interesting hypothesis but there's nothing solid to say, "Yes! You're right!" There's really no way to know which underlying OS services are better provided by XP or Linux.

One More Time

[CajunArson]

Since this article was already highlighted on OSnews and Newsforge, I am once again forced to repeat myself:
Cringely has no idea wtf he is talking about.
Windows XP is NOT a simple windows manager sitting atop MS-DOS.
But it has a DOS prompt!! Yeah, so does Linux if you install an emulator, does that mean Linux runs on MS-DOS?? The DOS prompt in XP is just another program that happens to look like what you used in the 80's before there was Linux :)
I could go on and on about how XP is based off the NT core which came from VMS and how different the X server is from how MS does its graphical shell, but I'm sure many other posters will put up the same info.
OK: Even ignoring why Cringely was completely wrong from a technical standpoint, here's why he's still wrong even if he were right (does that make sense?)
MS: Has spent a boatload of money copying and building there own versions of what everyone else already had. They are finally starting to get it right, and are making money hand over fist doing it (at least in the OS sphere which is what we are talking about). Moving to a Linux base would be a HUGE investment, and MS software would go back to the stability of Win98 for 3 generations as they worked out all the bugs. As much as the Linux gurus on Slashdot would love to see MS sabotage themselves like that, they aren't that stupid.
Linux: Linux would NOT be helped by having MS grab the Linux kernel and use it as a base for their OS. I also don't give a fsck what you'll say about "but the GPL!!" If MS were to do this they would withouth question weasal around the GPL or hire an army of lawyers to get it thrown out or watered down to the point it wouldn't matter. Meanwhile, they would either not give any code back to the kernel, or more likely would inject code specifically designed to slowly build up an IP claim over the entire kernel.
MS doesn't like Linux but believe me, they are doing it a major favor by not trying to subvert it, and despite how much everyone here loves to bash MS, a whole bunch of the software running on
Linux owes some credit to MS for providing a model to follow, like it or not.
Once again, Cringely is proved to be a whole bag of hot air.

Re:And compromise compatibility with drivers, etc

[miu]

Have you read this dope's article? I'm begining to wonder if he even knows what a computer is much less an operating system. There are so many holes/problems with this guys article and way of thinking that I don't even know where to begin. I mean damn!

Yeah, Cringely is either incompetent or trolling for readers. A couple of glaring errors are worth pointing out:

Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe.

Wrong. cmd.exe != DOS

Windows XP is not an operating system. It is a windowing system that sits atop an operating system much as KDE or Gnome sit atop Linux.

Wrong again. explorer.exe != Windows

Now back to Microsoft putting Windows on top of Linux. Linux is better, faster, stronger than whatever is living underneath XP now, right? Performance would improve. As Mike Class points out, by not having to develop its own OS, Microsoft could also save money. They wouldn't need however many people are presently devoted to maintaining the underlying OS that isn't supposed to be there.

Strike three! There are lots of things to like like about Linux, but these claims are ridiculous.

Re:They'll use FreeBSD or NetBSD if anything

[sl3xd]

Of course they don't. That's why they like the BSD licence (and hate GPL): With the BSD licence, they can take all they want, have some obscure reference to the original authors in the documentation, and re-sell the work as if it were their own. The BSD licence doesn't ask anything more than to give credit where credit is due-- it's worth noting, however, that Microsoft has even violated that licence in the past. (They ripped off some fairly large chunks of BSD code, and never gave credit to the original authors).

However, the GPL licence: It requires that Microsoft give back; the thing to remember is that Microsoft is like a roach motel for source code -- it checks in, but it doesn't check out. The GPL would require Microsoft to make available any code they change under the GPL; it takes away their absolute control over the code, and takes away their ability to (over)charge for said code. Plus, a good roach motel doesn't let anything escape.

What an idiot

[EvilNTUser]

Are we really supposed to take someone who says something like this seriously:

"Even today, you can still get to a C: prompt under Windows XP, which means a disk operating system is hiding there no matter what Microsoft wants us to believe."

Clearly the NT kernel is just a big lie, just like NASA never went to the moon. Thank you, Cringely, you have shown me the light!

And what the hell does he mean by "a disk operating system is hiding there"?? Please, someone, give him a non-disk operating system and see how far he gets after all his drives disappear.

Besides, it's not the NT kernel that's the problem, it's all the crap MS has put around it.

Re:No.

[CptNoSkill]

Yea Microsoft would never base their products on something that apple made.. oh.. wait a minute....

Everyone is missing the point.

[Jason Pollock]

Cringley isn't an idiot. You may not agree with what he's saying, you may think that he doesn't understand what an OS is, you may even think that Microsoft would never follow that course, but he isn't an idiot.

He is talking about Microsoft doing _exactly_ the same thing that Apple has done with OSX (use someone else's OS), except with Linux instead of BSD. Five years ago, would anyone have thought that Apple would use someone else's OS to run their UI? Heresy!

Is it going to be as easy as simply porting a windowing system? No Way! Does he understand that? Most certainly.

What he is saying is that Microsoft has demonstrated that it doesn't _need_ to control the underlying OS in order to get everyone to think that they're running the show on the desktop.

He points out the benefits of moving to Linux or even BSD. Would replacing XP/NT/9X as the OS remove MFC .NET, C#, DirectX or any other API? Nope, it would just use the underlying OS differently. In fact, Wine has done a lot of this already...

Would Microsoft ever do it? Doubtful, but then I would have sworn that Apple would never use BSD...

Jason Pollock

Re:Everyone is missing the point.

[jpmorgan]

No, Cringley is missing the point, and he's talking about something he doesn't understand: namely the Windows/NT mix.

In some respects he's right, but accidentally (a stopped clock is right twice a day), in that Windows is built on top of another operating system, in this case, NT. But to transition to another base there are three questions that would have to be answered:

• Is it possible?
• Would it be better?
• Would it be economic?

Is it possible? Not without a lot of modification to Linux. NT is not UNIX and has a number of fundamentally different idioms; while Win32 abstracts a lot of this, it still pokes through in a few places. Even if Microsoft implemented features in the Linux kernel necessary, they'd still be forced to deprecate half the API and force developers to rewrite their applications to take full advantage of the new architecture. And if they rewrote Linux enough to make this unnecessary, it wouldn't be Linux anymore - it'd be an NT rewrite.

Would it be better? Cringley simply assumes that Linux is faster, more stable, etc... than NT. Windows is notorious for being unstable, although most of that reputation is due to the Win9x line. Win2K/XP have been known to crash on occasion, but unless you're using some seriously broken hardware, or have fucked its internals up a lot, it doesn't crash that often, and even then the vast majority of crashes are due to the Win32 layer, not NT itself. NT has a stronger security model, is realtime and fully reentrant. In short, the problems with Windows 2000/XP are not the fault of NT, but Win32 itself. Exactly how would porting Win32 to Linux solve these problem?

Would it be economic? The marginal benefit of porting to Linux would be minimal, and at great expense. I can't see how Microsoft would justify it.

Cringley suggested something that is fundamentally highly technical without understanding the real issues involved, which was stupid. This is particularly ironic when you consider the section of his site saying that people should listen to him since he knows what he's talking about. Once again this simply proves that he's nothing more than a digital snake-oil salesman - under the guise of holding an expert opinion, he tells people what they want to hear in exchange for ratings.

Windows Kernels, and Environments

[einhverfr]

but explorer.exe is not the windowing layer/api, just like Gnome is not X-Window

Quick and dirty architectural comparisons:

Linux Kernal -> Windows Kernel
sh -> cmd.exe
X server -> GDI.exe
Window Manager -> Explorer.exe
CORBA -> (D)COM

Note these are just quick approximations. My point is that both OS's are reasonably mature and stable (baring spyware, etc.) and there are a lot of areas where both could improve, but porting Windows onto Linux doesn;t make sense for Microsoft today and is a lot more work than Cringly seems to think.

But then this guy has never seemed to know what he is talking about

Re:And compromise compatibility with drivers, etc

[Anonymous Coward]

In Windows 3.1 you could run DOS-atop-Windows-atop-DOS... but if you ever tried to run "Win" in that environment, you would get a message that indicated that Windows-atop-DOS-atop-Windows-atop-DOS just wan't going to happen, you're not at a "real" DOS prompt. You didn't have a full-featured version of DOS there, just the interface level.

Actually, it was the "full-featured version of DOS" running in that DOS prompt under Win3.1 and Win9X.

The X86 architecture has 2 main modes of operation: real mode (compatibility with 8086/186 processors -- all PCs to this day boot in this mode) and protected mode.

Under protected mode, it was possible to create something called a Virtual 8086-mode task. This allowed for real mode simulation within a protected mode environment, thus allowing real mode programs to work.

Each V86 session can, for most practical purposes, be made to think it is the only thing running (with no knowledge that it is being virtualized and having various instructions, operations, and interrupts intercepted by the protected mode operating system.)

Getting into protected mode from V86 mode is not possible, hence why Windows wouldn't run in a DOS box. It is also possible for real mode programs running in V86 mode to detect V86 mode by checking the appropriate processor status flag (I'm not sure if the OS can intercept this.)

DPMI (DOS Protected Mode Interface) is what eventually allowed 32-bit DOS programs to run in true real mode or in DOS boxes. In DOS boxes, Windows would be the DPMI server; but in real mode, you'd need an external program to get you into protected mode first -- CWSDPMI, for example.